


sine qua non

by snagov



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Human, Established Relationship, Forbidden Love, Hope, Imperial Russia, Inspired by Anastasia (1997 & Broadway), Love, M/M, Master/Servant, Secret Relationship, Upstairs Downstairs - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:35:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25428514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snagov/pseuds/snagov
Summary: There is a ball tonight at the Winter Palace. Crowley has laid out his lord's clothes.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 133





	sine qua non

_"Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see  
_ _her every movement in my head.... Undressing,  
_ _taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching  
_ _for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way_

_she always does.... And I lie here awake,  
_ _knowing the pearls are cooling even now  
_ _in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night  
_ _I feel their absence and I burn."_

Carol Ann Duffy, _Warming Her Pearls_

_Saint Petersburg, Russia  
_ _1916_

It is winter and the cold has busy hands.

December is a frigid month. The cold is relentless. It creeps in with the night, with the shadows. It hides under beds, in the closets. It gets in the spine, between your teeth. Crowley tries to massage it out from his knuckles, the sticky cold. It’s worse in his attic room. The bare floor, the bare walls. Here, in his lord’s bedchamber, the carpets are thick. Velvet drapes catch the little heat from the fire. Velvet on the windows, velvet on the bedframe. 

A hopeful youth stokes the fire in the hearth, Crowley waves him away. He stands in front of it for a long spell, alone in the room. Skinny as a rib, letting the fire’s warmth curl around him like loving arms. See him, do you know him? He could be anyone. He could be either of us. You or me, me or you. Pale and drawn, a spare and ascetic thing. He talks quickly, moves rapidly. It’s only after he has slithered away that you realize he is a cobra-shaped lie. He is nothing. _Nothing,_ really. Skinny as a serpent and meant only for the dirt. He knows what he is. Yes, nothing good. A bit of _nothing_ plucked out of the air and given miserable bones and a regrettable voice. Poured into a dark wool suit. Crowley has clawed his way up through the dirt, through black soil and twisted roots, finding some strange patch of sun here, as a valet in his master’s house. Here he is, laying out his lord’s clothing. The cummerbund. The waistcoat. The gold watch and its albert chain. His lord, Aziraphale, the Marquis, has always been a little behind the times. (Crowley thinks of the bowtie still in the drawer, there for daytime wear. How Aziraphale prefers the batswing knot, popular thirty years ago.) A white silk banyan hangs over a black-lacquered screen. A potted apple tree hides in the corner, half-turned to the faint sun.

There is, as there often is, a dance tonight. Tonight it will be held at the Winter Palace. Crowley has never been to the Winter Palace, not _properly._ He has never been past the Baroque green and white facade, Crowley knows the little mice who work there, who skitter about the kitchens and the labyrinthine back rooms. He knows the gossip of the hallways and the back stairs, the downstairs stories, just as he knows them here in his own home. He has never been to a dance, no, but he can imagine what it might look like. He closes his eyes for a beat, imagining the sound of clicking heels on the tile floor. The gilt and gold that lines the Nicholas Hall, the chandeliers massive above the heads of the dancers, dripping with crystals and masterpieces on their own. Masterpieces lost among a sea of gorgeous things. There would be dancing, oh yes, and music too. He pictures his lord, Aziraphale, extending a hand in invitation to a waltz. That pale hair would shine with still more gold under the lights. His eyes would glitter too, bright chandeliers in a smiling face. His mouth curling up, his nose gently upturned. _May I have this dance,_ Aziraphale would ask. 

Who could say no?

(Not him.)

Crowley keeps secrets. Against his neck, a secret. A string of freshwater pearls. There to be tucked under a shirt, concealed and kept away. His long fingers reach for it there, slack on his neck, warmed by his own skin. A bit of warmth, there for Aziraphale to wear. A bit of his own body temperature wrapped up in a necklace. 

Tucked in his sleeve, a secret. A pale blue cravat, made of finely woven silk. Worn against his skin, kept warm. His own scent sinking into it, something of cedar and apples too. (Crowley bites his lower lip, thinking about tying the cravat around Aziraphale's neck. His own signature self captured in silk and there, held close to the nose. All night, Crowley will keep him warm. All night, Aziraphale will wear him, smell him, remember him.) 

A bit, if you will, of love.

Crowley never says _I love you._ Dangerous thing, to admit love. No, instead let it live unknown and pulsing, silent and unnamed. Think, perhaps, of blue. There had been a time before the naming of blue. The ancients did not have a word for it, painting their seas with the brush of _wine-dark_ instead. Yet, it existed. Blue lived without a name and without being named, as a wine-dark love lives here in his chest. Equally deep, equally anonymous. 

He doesn’t have to say it.

The clock strikes six. In the deep of December, the dark comes early. The sky is an abyssal black. Crowley glances toward the windows. Somewhere, far past the luster of the city, past the gas streetlamps and past the fires lit in grates, yes, past it all, there is the moon. Look further than the cacophony of lit windows of apartments and houses, stores and pubs, yes, further than that are the stars. You might see them if you look closely, if you wipe the light pollution from your eyes. Wherever we are, flung out across the planet, we might shine under the self-same stars. Might find our faces lit by the same moon. By the standards of the endless and expanding Universe, we are not so far away, you and I. Practically neighbors. Crowley thinks of impossibilities. Consider the chances of proximity. Here in this wide spread of existence, what is the likelihood that we might find each other? That we might dig up each others' names, brush the dirt off of both of our faces? What about time? What is the probability that we might share a month, a year, a decade?

Look how close we are, you and I. What is another hiccup? Another hurdle? What is another impossibility on the list? Throw it on the burnpile, impossibilities make for good kindling. 

There is a movement. Crowley jumps, turning. 

“I suppose it’s time then,” Aziraphale says, closing the door behind him, coming in to dress. Crowley glances up, pausing in his movements. His hands still over the fabrics, the laid-out clothing. Against the lamps and the fireplace, Aziraphale’s curls gleam as spun gold. His eyes are the color, Crowley thinks, of violets and hydrangeas. A lick of lilac, a gust of wheat. His shoulders are broader than Crowley’s and thicker-set, giving Atlas a challenge on steadiness. The lines on his face show his middle age, catching under his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. 

_You look like an angel._ (It is not the first time Crowley has thought this. It won’t be the last. On his first day of employment, they had shared a carriage, stopped to fix a horseshoe along the way. Crowley had noticed a change. " _Are you missing your watch, my lord?"_ Aziraphale had shifted uneasily in his seat. 

_"I gave it away."_

_"You what?"_ Crowley had asked this with wide eyes, forgetting his place. Forgetting that he is a creeping thing with no name, no title, no hands to find purchase on Aziraphale. 

_"I gave it away! It’s cold out there. And she’s expecting."_

Crowley had blinked at him. At the unexpected kindness, the uncommon bit of warmth in a wintery world. He had taken one look, one listen, one million-year swan dive from this seat in a carriage, and had fallen in love.) 

"Yes, 'spose it is," Crowley drawls, smiling lazily at Aziraphale. "Dining on the finest delicacies the palace has to offer."

Food marks out their differences. One thing in a sea of plenty. Yes, after Aziraphale leaves, Crowley will take his supper at the long table downstairs. He'll kick his long legs out under the bench, roll his shoulders, find distraction in some infernal newspaper or another. A bottle of wine, perhaps. A bit of soup, a bit of bread. The cook makes borscht the way Crowley's mother had. A good soup starts with good bones. Throw them in and the marrow too, let them steep. Beets and peppercorns, onions and carrots. Thinly sliced cabbage. Smashed garlic. He eats it from a chipped bowl, a grey-glazed bit of earthenware, topped with sour cream and heavy sprigs of dill. The rye bread is a little stale, stiff in his stiff fingers. Doesn't matter, he dips it in the soup, mops every bit up with the crust.

At the Winter Palace, it will be different. The tsar's kitchens are run by Cubat, an imported French chef with imported French techniques. Crowley knows the story. He has not been to the palace but he _has_ been to the palace's kitchens. They are housed in a separate building, not more than a crow's flight away, over on Palace Street. A long underground tunnel runs to connect the two, constantly bustling with trays and dishes, white-aproned maids. The servers will bustle along this path, back and forth. Tonight, for the ball, they will be dressed finely in ceremonial livery. White tie and white gloves. (Crowley knows that the Imperial servants are selected for looks and height, for their elegant speech and agreeable demeanor. They will lean over Aziraphale's shoulder, quietly inquiring. _More wine, my lord?_ Crowley knows this. Even with trust, he tries not to think about it.) 

Aziraphale laughs. "Don't forget drinking up all their good wine."

"Mmm yes," Crowley agrees. “Certainly _that._ And, of course, dancing with all the eligible ladies.” 

“One must,” Aziraphale murmurs, quietly against the room. “It’s expected.” 

“‘Course.” Crowley looks at him in the mirror, watching how Aziraphale inhales as Crowley reaches around his own neck, unclasping the pearl strand and looping it around Aziraphale’s own neck. This gift of his own warmth, his own heat. A secret under the shirt, there against a heartbeat. _It’s cold outside, I have nothing to offer you but a bit of warmth._

“How would you handle it?” Aziraphale’s voice is soft. Half a breath. “Dancing, I mean?”

“Dancing,” Crowley repeats. “Maybe I would start with a compliment. On the lady’s hair, something about golden curls. How the color of her - “ Crowley’s eyes flicker up and down Aziraphale’s waistcoat, “ - dress really sets them off.” 

Aziraphale watches him, breathing in. Crowley runs the rabbit’s foot brush over the back of the coat, leans in to straighten the sleeves. He kneels to right the lay of Aziraphale’s trousers. His head turns slightly, there near Aziraphale’s relaxed arms. “I might even kiss her hand, if I was quite interested.” He presses a blameless kiss there, right into the nest of veins of Aziraphale’s inner wrist. Keep it secret, keep it safe. Keep the confession there, safe on the tongue, balled up like a pearl. Love creeps in when we’re not looking. A stowaway. A bit of sand. Here, how do we learn to live with it? You and I layer it with nacre, rounding out the roughness, the hard edges. We make a smooth pearl of it, secret and beautiful. My love is not a creeping thing but a treasure.

"And then?" Aziraphale gasps, breathless. He leans back against the poster of the bed, carefully watching the press of Crowley's mouth into his skin. His long fingers blaze along Aziraphale's stomach, setting a path of fire to the sea. This is not the first time, pushing his hands through the fabric draping over Aziraphale's chest, running his hands down to find Aziraphale hard and hot underneath.

"And then," Crowley says, pressing his forehead into Aziraphale's leg, resting his head in the shallow between hip and thigh. "I would take her out. On the dance floor." He reaches in, pulling out Aziraphale's desperate cock. 

Square, perfectly-manicured fingers find Crowley's hair, digging into the red mess of it, pulling him closer in. This is not new, this familiar dance of familiar lovers. 

"Would you?"

"'Course, angel," Crowley grins, "I'd show her a _good_ time." 

He sucks down Aziraphale's cock in a single go, deepthroating him to the hilt. Aziraphale does not cry out, he's practiced this, has done this before. His mouth opens in a silent cry. Bitten off. His hands fist in Crowley's hair. Pulling closer. The tines of Crowley's fingers dig into Aziraphale's thighs, spearing at him like a fork. His open mouth like a wolf at the table, tearing into the feast. 

"My dear," Aziraphale gasps, failing at pretense. They are not master and servant, not in bed. Look at them. Crowley in his dark suit, dropped to his knees and his eyelids dropped too, his eyelashes in a dark fall against his pale skin and lined eyes. Aziraphale grips at his hair, his neck, squeezing softly, breathing in with rapid, shallow breaths. His nails digging mezzaluna ditches in Crowley's skin. _Mark me. Tear at me. Leave something of you with me, something to take with me. Let me keep a little of you. A bruise, a bite, a lock of your hair. When you dance with women I've never met and drink wines I'll never drink, laughing there under chandeliers I'll never see, let me take something of you back up to my attic room. I'll hide it under my pillow, stash it in my trunk. Take it out when I miss you. When I need you._

Aziraphale twitches in his mouth, his hips scattering across the bed. Crowley holds him there, steady in his long-fingered grip. _I’ve got you._ His cock is heavy on Crowley’s tongue and warm too. He tastes like dust and salt, He tastes like something beloved. Crowley knows every habit of how Aziraphale might fuck his mouth. How he will hold back at first, how he will capitulate to Crowley’s stroking hands and murmured moans. His hips moving on the mattress, trying to get deeper still. To become a sea creature in the deep of Crowley’s body, secure and safe in the dark pressure of him. Aziraphale gasps and pulls at Crowley’s hair, pulling him off. 

“Alright, angel?” Crowley asks, fire in his foxhole eyes. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Aziraphale’s cock still shining with spit. 

“I’m too close.”

“Tell me what you want.”

“Everything.” Aziraphale reaches for Crowley with two hands, cupping his face with open palms and leaning in for a kiss. Crowley cries out into it, soft and always betrayed by his own capacity for want. Look at him, opening his mouth already, begging for Aziraphale to flow into him. He’s thin as a match and waiting to be struck. Cold. _Light me. You are the fire._

“For now, pick something. Anything you want.” (Crowley will make it happen. Any dream of Aziraphale’s. Any desire.)

“What about you?” Aziraphale asks, running a hand up under Crowley’s shirt. Over his navel and solar plexus. Crowley shivers. His skin celebrating Aziraphale’s touch. 

“I like it all.” _If it’s with you._

“I know you do.” Aziraphale undoes Crowley’s buttons, pushes the shirt from his back. Feel the warmth from the fire on his back, the warmth of Aziraphale in front of him. “Anthony,” Aziraphale murmurs, lighting Crowley with the use of his given name. “You can have favorites. Preferences. Sometimes, my dear, it can be about you.”

Crowley tries not to moan under Aziraphale’s wandering hand on his skin, marking his progress by sparking touch. 

“Angel -“

“What if you pushed me back on this bed?” Aziraphale moves further, pulling Crowley’s cock from his trousers. Already hard, interested. Needy and wanting, pleading for relief. “You love that, don’t you? Fucking me into the mattress?”

Crowley hisses like the snake he is. “ _Fuck_.” 

“I love that too,” Aziraphale presses a kiss to Crowley’s razor jaw, not minding the sharp bones. He pulls back to brush the hair from Crowley’s eyes, his skin undamaged. Uncut. Unmarred. “Darling, please. Make love to me.” 

Crowley pulls him in tight, his open mouth an invitation to ruin. This is how it goes, making love. He pushes Aziraphale back against the pillows, kissing all the way. The slope of his soft shoulders, the round of his belly. The curves of his thighs, his back. It’s a strange marvel to him to see the same cellular knit of their skin. To think that they have the same number of bones, the same need for air. These two creations of the Universe, spit out upon the earth. Tell me, what are the odds that they had gotten here at all? He runs hands over Aziraphale with reverence. No, there will never be a church for them but he builds his own in this four-postered bed. He writes the prayers himself in kisses along Aziraphale’s spine. When he sinks into Aziraphale’s body, it’s the agony and the ecstasy. The glory glory hallelujah. This, this strange moment of fumbling stars and beating hearts, fucking out to the beat of love, this is the holiest place of all. 

_Fuck, I love you._ Crowley grits his teeth, grips Aziraphale’s cock between them. He loves the feel of it, this proof of being wanted. He loves how Aziraphale presses into him, They do not say it but as Aziraphale spills out _Anthony_ from his tongue and his cock over Crowley’s hand, Crowley knows he is loved. 

_I love you._ He gasps it into Aziraphale’s cheek, burying his head there and burying himself as deep as possible in Aziraphale’s warmth. He fucks furiously, far too close to the edge and looking down. _Give me something to take with me. Bite me, bruise me_. _Incisors and molars too._ _Bite me,_ he thinks. It's better than a wedding ring. _If you love me, prove it with your teeth._

Aziraphale sinks his teeth gently in, a lunellum knife against the vellum of Crowley’s skin. Marked and claimed, proof positive that he has been touched once in love. (He will reach for his collar later, looking in a small mirror with one hand fisted around the base of his cock. There, terrified it had all been a figment, a faint dream, he will look for the mark to know the truth. That he is loved and will be again. He’ll come all over himself, a catastrophe between his own sticky sheets.)

Crowley bites his teeth deep into his lower lip, lecturing his voice with the pain, telling himself to keep quiet. He comes with blind eyes and twitching hands, sweat on his brow and his hips fucking hard into Aziraphale. Aziraphale wraps his legs around Crowley, pulling him in deeper still (giving him nowhere to hide).

He falls apart in Aziraphale’s arms, his breathing fast and sweat cooling on his brow. They, neither of them, try to hurry the clock. 

“There are rumors, you know,” Crowley says. He lays there, staring at the deep blue of the velvet canopy, counting out the minutes he gets. This too will end. They will take their positions again, just as they are. Aziraphale at the top of the stairs and Crowley at the bottom. “You need to be careful.”

“Rumors. In Saint Petersburg? Again?”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley breathes, holding his wrist tight, pulling Aziraphale closer in. “There are rumors _everywhere._ The world’s changing, angel.” He knows what he's heard. The whispers in the streets. This is not new. The Americans had had their revolution in 1776. The French in 1789. Change is coming and _nothing_ is quiet along the Eastern Front. The whispers come and the whispers go. (Crowley had been young during the Bloody Sunday massacre, somewhere in his late twenties. He remembers it. All of it, the thrill of possibility. The terror of how it might come to his lord's door.)

He _wants_ change. This division of class, this upstairs and downstairs, this is not sustainable. Change always comes, whether we ask it to or not. Sometimes, if we're lucky, it will knock first and ask for an invitation within. Crowley recalls walking toward his family’s home, the sky had been a pale iceblink yellow over the winter fields and spare streets. The hush of the word _revolt_ in the kitchen, in the parlor too. It is December. Who without bread does not remember the Decembrists of 1825, the hard-eyed stare at the Faberge lives of the privileged, steel swords drawn and white teeth bared?

“Is it?”

“We could go off together, you know. If you like. No one would notice. You'd be safe. Think about it. Catch a train to Paris. Take a ship to America. Who would know us there?” _Who would know us? What would it matter in a hundred years? It would be 2016 then, a new millennium with new rules. A new world. What would that be like? What about in a thousand? One thousand years ago, it was 916. God would be coming to Kiev soon, saints parading into town and statues ready to fall. The Kievan Rus dominated all, the Varangian sailors drifting up and down the Dneiper. Who will dig up our bones in a thousand years? Will they know our names? (If we are jumbled together, will it matter?)_

“My dear, do be serious.”

“I am.”

“It’s absurd.”

“ _Absurd_ is suggesting the top of a high mountain. Or even the moon. The stars. No train runs there. But we can go. We don’t have to stay here.” He doesn’t look up when he says it, picking instead at the few frayed threads on the damask pillows. “This is all gonna change. And even if it all ends up in a puddle of burning goo,” he hesitates, tripping over his own hope. “We could go off together.”

“Go off together?” Aziraphale whispers, his voice faint. Shadows play in blue light over his face. Periwinkle and French grey, shades of indecision. “Listen to yourself.”

“How long have we been together?” Crowley asks, reaching for Aziraphale’s hand, kissing each of the knuckles in turn. A slow progression of his mouth across bone. One by one by one. _“Six years.”_

“Together,” Aziraphale repeats. “We’re not - “

Crowley looks at him. “Yeah, I know.” The denial is a knife that too keenly cuts. He doesn’t want to hear the rest of the sentence. Six years of this dance. Six years of quietly circling closer, coming to an understanding. To an arrangement of a sort. _We have a lot in common, you and me._ (It would spell ruin for the both of them. Aziraphale would be punished, shamed. Crowley’s fate had been caught in Aziraphale’s terrified whisper. _If they found out, you would be destroyed._ ) 

Aziraphale looks around. Four walls, a ceiling and a floor. Carpeted and gilded, yes. His eyes measuring his cage. “This is my life.”

“Yeah,” Crowley mutters. “I know. Lords don’t marry kitchen boys.”

Aziraphale tucks a lock of red hair back, secure behind Crowley’s ear. _What do I look like to you?_ Laid out across the sheets, across this bed. A collapse of bones in thin skin, underfed and pale. His hair as red as an amphora, as red as shattered Attic pottery, lost across time. 

“You’re not a kitchen boy.”

“Hey,” Crowley laughs wryly. “Once a kitchen boy, always a kitchen boy.” 

"It will be fine," Aziraphale says, resolute and certain. There's steel in his skeleton, hidden under the shift of his curves, the silk on his back. Never underestimate him. "The tsar is setting things right. You'll see."

_It's Russia, angel. The people know to put their trust in something else beyond gilded promises. A fire, a carton of eggs, a bottle of wine. Not in the frost, which could kill you in a night. Not in the water, which takes what it likes. Not in crowned heads and titled hands, sleeping in warm palace beds._

“They won't. Ain't gonna work, trust me. Too little, too late. Democracy's the thing now. This old way - Look, you’re the only good one of the lot of ‘em," Crowley pauses. "You should go soon," he says, gathering his legs from the bed. He stands up.

“Where would we go?” Aziraphale asks. It's the only question that matters.

“I don't know. Somewhere.”

_It’d be different. We could pretend. I could borrow nights with you. Maybe, as the years go, as the world turns, I could keep a few of them. One or two, tucked into my pocket like insurance. We don’t belong to cathedrals, you and me. My head is bare and never bowed in Saint Isaac’s. I’ll never trade crowns with you, not there._ _There are other sacred places. Let us build churches in coves and forests. Let the crows bear witness, keep us company. (Later, much later, let them pick us clean.)_

Think of Crowley, walking along the pavement with his cold-boned hands shoved in his thin pockets, looking up at the domes of the church. He doesn’t belong inside, not anymore, not as he had as a child. Now, he is on the outside of the doors, outside of the gates and looking in. See the thick columns of the portico. Hear the bells calling followers to worship (not ringing for him).

“You would do that?” Aziraphale asks softly. "Leave here?" _Leave Russia?_

“Sure, yeah. Think about it. Two tickets. It’d be steamer class. We wouldn’t have - anything.” He brushes a fingertip over the pearls at Aziraphale’s flush-red throat. 

“I _do_ think about it,” Aziraphale whispers. “Rather often, I'm afraid. I just -“ He closes his eyes. “I have to do what I’m told.”

Crowley nods, bending his neck around the lump in his throat. Here he is, flushing under his own request. A hot-eyed beggar. His hopeless confession, wrapped up in _run away with me._

“I want to." 

Crowley closes his eyes. He finds himself squeezing Aziraphale's hand, saying _I love you_ without words. “I know,” he whispers. Don’t press your ear to the floor, don’t count the thump of the floorboards. His traitorous heart there, beating on ceaselessly against the past. It’s been chugging along for centuries, what’s a little bit longer? Here, have this steam-powered love. Elements of their separate lives play out. The clink of a gold signet ring against the bonerattle of his unclaimed spine. This table is reserved. This show is sold out. Show’s over, folks. Nothing there for you. _(For me. I don’t get to keep you, don’t remind me.)_

“Will you be here?” Aziraphale asks. “Tonight? After the dance.”

_I’ll be here in any way you need me. Ring the bell, call my name. Tell me where to be and when. I will come to you._ He shrugs, a jangle in a black jacket. “Always.” _Where else would you find me? Where else but at the other end of the bell, waiting for you to ring?_

The door closes.

Crowley stares at the carpet, his arms laid heavily across his legs, his elbows digging into his crag-faced knees. _Would things be any easier in any other borrowed life? If you had a different face, a different name? If we had met another way, reaching for the same plum at the supermarket? Neither of us tied up in different addresses, titles and stations. We were both born screaming into this world, how is there any difference at all?_

_Small hurdles, angel. (Throw them in the fire.)_

Outside, the world is dark, laid up by the night. How many houses are there in the city? How many back rooms in Saint Petersburg? Watch the cathedral pierce the sky, listen to Tchaikovsky's violins. Somewhere, somewhere in the dark, a rat skitters and Raskolnikov kills a woman with an axe. Anna meets Vronsky. Tell me about a complicated world, the darkest nights. The brightest days. Tell me about Saint Petersburg in winter, waiting for the spring to invite it along. 

It is winter. The cold has long shadows. The chill is an unwelcome houseguest, lingering far too long. 

The door opens. Crowley looks up.

“Anthony,” Aziraphale murmurs, hushed and strange. The door shuts securely behind him, pulled firmly shut with a click. The grandfather clock strikes a resounding seven.

“You’ll be late," Crowley says, flat and tight. _Let me lick my wounds in peace. You're too much right now._ _Look at you._ Aziraphale, dressed for a ball. Dressed for a dance. Cream silk, the parchment-pale confession of his throat. His pale blue eyes glittering like a crown. Crowley’s eyes widen slightly, taking it all in. He has dressed Aziraphale, seen Aziraphale. It has been years yet, still, the wonder never stops. _You really do look like an angel._

“We would have no money.”

Crowley’s brow digs his own grave. “Yeah.”

“You would be okay with that?”

A blink. “More used to that than having it at all.” His hands dig into the blankets, the wrinkled duvet. “You’re gonna miss the champagne toast.”

“I’m not going.”

“You what.”

“I’m not going to the ball.”

Crowley stands. He stares. He doesn’t understand. The fire casts warm light in chiaroscuro patterns on his face, the dark clinging to his sharp cheekbones, his long, aquiline nose. (His mother had told him he had been born half-crow. Half-crow, yes. Always ready to take off. Always hungry.) _What are you saying?_ (Familiar lovers don’t have to ask. We wrote the book together. Still, Crowley blinks, open to a new chapter. The start of a sequel. He had never expected more.)

He finds his hands taken in Aziraphale’s own. Ending the world together, starting a new one. 

“Buy the tickets,” Aziraphale says. 

Crowley looks at their hands. “Are you certain?” _My world, my place. It won’t be as beautiful. You could not come back, couldn’t take it back. Not here._ “You couldn’t come back here.” Crowley waves a hand, gesturing to the window, to Russia beyond. “Not to Saint Petersburg. Russia. Home.” 

Aziraphale closes his eyes. “I know.” 

_Elope with me, miss private._ Two lives, threaded together. Look at them, like a tangle of ivy on a garden floor. Hedera helix, Crowley’s vine-reaching hands, curling and grasping for Aziraphale. _Don’t tease me. Don’t give me an inch, don’t open the door. I’ll keep showing up like a dog begging for scraps. I’ll take scraps from your table, shove your love in my pockets for lean nights. It’s cold in the dark, this ice in the dead of winter. You and I were born here, in the north, to the verglas on the flagstones. There’s drift ice in the rivers, black ice on the streets. Let’s go for a walk. I often pretend that we’re both in the same clothes, nothing noticeable, walking the bridges over the rivers. We’ll pause on Trinity Bridge, the Neva will flow under us. You’ll look up at the obelisks, at the cast-iron molding, the art nouveau curves of it. I’ll tell you what I’ve been reading, you’ll tell me the recent opera you’ve seen. When I tell you that I love you, it will be with the artists’ blue hour in the background, the sun just set beyond the curve of the earth and promising to rise again. Twilight will cloak us and no one will see if I take your hand, if only for a minute, once upon a time in the dark._

“Buy the tickets,” Aziraphale says, repeating himself. Making it real.

“When?” 

“Tomorrow.”

Crowley raises a brow, his mouth curving up. His heart attacks the jailcell of his ribs, skitter-scattering in his chest. “When you’re in, you’re _all_ in, eh?” Aziraphale has always been a force of nature. More luxury liner than skiff, difficult to turn and steady steady steady in his path. Crowley breathes in, inhaling the scent of this new direction, two paths meeting in a wood and carrying on together. Aziraphale frowns slightly, pressing his mouth in a considering line. He watches Crowley for a beat, then marches deliberately over.

“I should have done this from the start,” Aziraphale says, resting his hands on Crowley’s chest, tangling them on his dark wool lapels. Crowley dares a shallow breath. 

“Done what?” He licks his lips, uncertain. Unsure. Crowley looks up. Aziraphale is painted by fire, by the warmth of the small room. His eyes burn and the winter melts away still more. This little ice age, this year without a summer. Crowley leans in without thinking, without pause, pressing his mouth to Aziraphale’s and finally warm again. Aziraphale brings their joined hands to his throat, resting there on the bit of jewelry, these freshwater pearls, a secret made beautiful. 

“I love you,” Aziraphale whispers, scarce few centimeters from Crowley’s mouth, his breath warm on Crowley’s starving skin. “I always have. I should have been telling you for years.” And then this, his living kiss. Warm skin, warm hands, the promise of more. 

“God, angel - I know - I love you, you know that, right? You’ve gotta, tell me you know that - “

Aziraphale smiles. His hands find a tangle of red hair, wild across Crowley’s face. He brushes the strands away. “I’ve always known.” 

“Shit,” Crowley whispers, smiling against Aziraphale’s lips. “You - “ He looks at Aziraphale, their foreheads knocking together, hands as tangled as they should have always been. “You - you’re _so much_. Are you sure - “

_“Anthony J. Crowley,”_ Aziraphale says, kissing him again, “Buy the tickets. Find us a place. Somewhere.”

A squeeze of the hands, lightning in his throat. Crowley looks up from their hands to Aziraphale’s eyes, trying to understand the terrifying feeling of falling, of falling in love. Heat expands rapidly. Heat rises. There is heat in his chest, filling him. Filling the empty spaces of him, the stone-heavy stomach and the echoing heart too. There is a danger to rising, to flying. You might fall.

It’s worth the risk, isn’t it? (Tell me, have you ever gotten everything you had ever wanted?)

“What if there’s nowhere? Out there? For us and all this - stuff.” _What if you take it back? What if you turn around and say no? What if I buy the tickets and you don’t get on the boat? Where would we be then?_

“Then,” Aziraphale says, sealing Crowley with a kiss. “Then we’ll keep looking, won’t we? Until we find something suitable. Or, darling, we can always build it ourselves.”

A kiss, a promise. Crowley closes his eyes and leans in, his hands shaking and coming to rest on Aziraphale's soft throat. Beneath silk lie the pearls, warm against the breastbone. Pulled from the cold water, plucked from the winter. Held up to this gorgeous fire for a bit of begged heat. _You burn me,_ he thinks, letting his wick catch. It is winter, yes, quiet and dark and deep. The ice air cuts our skin, our faces. Our bones chatter and the nights seem long. 

Spring is coming. Until then, we will build fires to keep us warm.

**Author's Note:**

> Reposted with permission.


End file.
